Ahhh, the sun of a thousand galaxies, and it’s all shining down here on…me. (Pictures taken on Waseda Dori somewhere around Ochiai, I think, on April 13th, 2012. I had been very sick for nearly the entire first two weeks I was in Tokyo. Some kind of lung infection, which I later learned I probably [...]
It is a cliché of great truth: In Tokyo, one of the most crowded and kinetically frenzied cities on Earth, it is easy to be alone. I spent a lot of time alone in Tokyo in 2012—in my apartment, in restaurants, and in seedier parts of the city—during the five weeks in April and May [...]
She was small. She was alone. People passed by, and she just kept dialing the phone. And I loved her. I could have jumped from my train, across the oncoming Shinjuku subway tracks, and asked her to have soba noodles and cold beer with me until it was time for breakfast in Tsukiji. ¥▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬¥▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬¥ (I’m [...]
Sometimes Tokyo is the cigarette you toss into an ashtray full of garbage and water. Sometimes Tokyo is the restaurant you pass by every day but never go in. Sometimes Tokyo is toys you see in a school display while walking from Nakano Station to Shinjuku. (Pictures taken in Nakano-ku and Shinjuku-ku in [...]
Part One: Mulling over the choices I’ve made in life what it basically comes down to is: I just happened to look into your camera while you thought you secretly took a picture of me. Then we pass each other on this street in Shinjuku right after the death of all cherry blossoms and we [...]
In Tokyo, things move and change. The light is its own ghost, never knowing where to go or haunt or which shadows to vanquish. The people have a more adjusted purpose, and look where the light takes them. In Shinjuku, things move and change. You never see the same people twice, or at least [...]
On my last day in Tokyo, I encountered this extraordinary-looking woman in Shinjuku Station on the Narita Express train platform. Turns out she and her husband were Americans, going home to New York City after 10 days in Japan. I asked her “Is this a punk-rock thing, a cosplay thing, an art thing, or just [...]
I walked east from my lodgings in Nakano, Tokyo last Friday. I had been sick for some days with a bronchial infection. Not the way I wanted to spend much time here. But there is time. It suspends itself in Tokyo and waits for you. So when I walked, I ended up at a section [...]
